More Coverage

Human trafficking victims in Southwestern Ontario soon will be able call a 24-hour hotline that will connect them with local support services.

A national human trafficking hotline will be launched next fall, said Barbara Gosse, chief executive of the Canadian Centre to End Human Trafficking, the Toronto-based agency setting up the toll-free service.

“This crime needs to end in Canada,” Gosse said of human trafficking. “There needs to be a co-ordinated, integrated, national strategy on this.”

The hotline also will field tips about human trafficking, leading to the ­creation of a database that will help non-profit groups and law enforcement agencies better understand and respond to the problem.

In 2008, the United States became the first country to establish a national human trafficking hotline. Polaris, a non-profit that runs the American service, has partnered with the Canadian Centre to End Human Trafficking to help set up the new hotline north of the border.

At Polaris headquarters in Washington, D.C. — the exact location is kept secret due to the sensitive nature of its work — a team of staffers field between 200 and 250 calls a day, hotline director Caroline Diemar said.

“We have seen a steady increase of calls every year,” Diemar said.

There were 53,936 calls to the hotline in 2016, up significantly from 5,746 in 2008.

Inside the call centre, two workers field calls, while a large computer monitor overhead displays the day’s call tally, the duration of the calls and the number of callers waiting in the queue.

“We are able to connect our callers, especially victims and survivors, with a vast network of service providers,” said Diemar, who pegged the annual cost of the hotline at $4 million.

An interpreter service allows the hotline to respond to calls in 200 languages. Information can also be sent through texts and submitted online.

The Canadian hotline will cost $2 million a year, Gosse estimated, plus $3 million for awareness campaigns.

The hefty price tag is the main reason the hotline has been in the works since 2016. No government funding is being provided and only recently has an anonymous donor made the project possible, Gosse said.

“It was a very serious contribution,” she said, declining to reveal the amount.

Information collected from the hotline also will help the Canadian Centre to End Human Trafficking with its policy and research work, Gosse said.

With its proximity to Highway 401, where women and girls are forced to work as prostitutes out of nearby hotels, London has been identified as a human-trafficking hub.

Last year, the London police human trafficking unit laid more than 200 charges, including 16 human trafficking counts. Fifteen females were rescued and 30 johns charged.

Dale Carruthers is one of 20 ­international journalists ­taking part in the Foreign Press ­Centre’s Combating ­Trafficking in ­Persons trip. The group is travelling to Washington, D.C., ­Houston, Texas, and Los Angeles for the two-week program, ­sponsored by the U.S. government.